The Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to limit the power of the military to monitor and intervene in civilian affairs by tearing up a long-standing protocol, Turkish media reported Thursday.
The so-called EMASYA protocol, or Protocol on Cooperation for Security and Public Order, signed in the aftermath of a constitutional crisis in 1997, is to be revoked by the government, as it seeks to reign in a restive military leadership, DPA reported.
The protocol allowed the army to internally gather intelligence and conduct operations without the express consent of civilian authorities.
In January, new details of coup-planning within the army, which sees itself as the guarantor of the secular constitution and objects to the Islamist bent of Erdogan's AK Party, were made known.
Interior Minister Besir Atalay is expected to formally revoke the protocol before the anniversary of the so-called Postmodern Coup, in which on February 28, 1997 the army pressured the resignation of the prime minister of the day.
AK Party representative Suat Kilic told the Today's Zaman newspaper that the EMASYA protocol brought "restrictions that are stricter than those brought by martial law. Turkey is not a police state. It is not a state of judges and the army. If we are a democratic state of law, our laws and our acts should conform to this."